Apple Stock Soars as iPhone 5 Sells Out

Apple stock is currently sitting at record highs, thanks to enthusiasm over their new iPhone 5, which was just unveiled earlier this week.

Instead of opening up pre-orders on the day of the big media event, Apple decided to wait until Friday, September 14th to allow eager customers to reserve their new device. Pre-order opened this morning at 12:01 am PT, and in less than a few hours Apple.com was reporting delays in shipping time.

The original shipping date for the iPhone was September 21st, but Apple.com currently displays the time of “2 weeks,” meaning a September 28th ship date. A few hours ago, carrier sites like AT&T and Verizon still displayed the September 21st ship date, but at least Verizon is beginning to dial it back a few days. Simply put: the iPhone 5 is selling out.

On that news, Apple stock is soaring this morning. As of 12:20 pm ET, the price sits at just shy of $700 a share at $696.82. It’s up over 13.7% since trading began.

With the immediate enthusiasm shown by Apple customers, analysts believe that the iPhone 5 is going to be huge hit. One such analyst predicts that the iPhone 5 is set to crush the iPhone 4S in sales, and we know that the 4S was no slouch in that department.

“Given that the iPhone 4S received over 1 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours, we indicated this week that we expected 1.3 million to 1.5 million pre-orders for the iPhone 5,” said Brian White at Topeka. “At the same time, the iPhone 4S sold over 4 million units in the first three days last year, and assuming supply chain constraints aren’t a major issue, we also have projected at least 5 million to 5.5 million iPhone 5’s can be sold in this same time frame. With similar caveats, we have projected Apple could sell 10 million to 12 million iPhone 5 units in 4QFY12, making our iPhone projections look very conservative. Given the initial demand for the iPhone 5 based on the expanded shipping times (assuming no major shortage), our estimates could prove conservative.”

Daniel Gleeson at IHS thinks that the iPhone will be the driver for Apple to have their biggest quarter for iPhone sales ever, pushing shipments 60% year-over-year.